“The year off was definitely a blessing. It gave us an additional 12 months to work on how we wanted to grow the event, and how we wanted the event to be seen by an increasing number of patrons, increasing the general footprint. The Forum was a great place to start, but the aim was to have an indoor and outdoor environment with multi-dimensional areas. The additional time, plus forging the relationship with Mushroom and getting the operational and logistic support, was all a great bonus,” he says.
Sugar Mountain has harnessed a reputation for visual art unlike any other festival, presenting arresting installations alongside a healthy musical lineup. “We’re looking for a completely holistic festival experience, finding the meeting point between musical and visual art. Being able to curate something of this nature and of this scale, which is why we want to keep it relatively boutique in a space we really want to tailor, it’s imperative to not only our brand, but what we want to create as a whole,” Louis states. “We’ve been able to span it internationally, and this year with more space and more stages, it means we can have greater installations. A lot of the international artists we targeted this year, Nonotak, a two-piece from France, we can host in a warehouse space for a full-scale digital experience. That’s one of the great strengths of our team, being able to pair the right visuals with the right tactile environment. For example, Midnight Juggernauts are doing a one-off performance, looking at how they can incorporate visuals and that theatrical element into their show. You can’t see it as just art or just music, it’s about the total package for us.”
The festival is imbued with a sense of unique platform, inspiring artists, music and visual, to create work unseen elsewhere on the touring circuit. “I think they’re always open to it,” Louis reasons. “When you go do international tours and drum up the amount of shows they do, they want to create something that is completely bespoke or unique to that one event. We provide the platform to do that. When you suggest things, some artists are malleable and some aren’t. But I think that can be down to what they want to achieve as a performer.”
One of those unique performances occurred at the 2013 iteration. Kirin J Callinan and Kris Moyes’ performance planned to trigger a planted audience member’s photosensitive epilepsy, and was supposedly cancelled at the last minute, with a challenging charade of a selfie-taking stage-invading bodybuilder and crowd-borne berating ensuing. “What we learnt, and it is always a learning process – which is why it’s good to have Mushroom on board as like this father figure, not that they’re holding our hands through this thing – is being pointed in the right direction,” Louis states. “We’re constantly cautious, not just because of what happened in 2013, but just because we want to provide the best experience to everyone who comes to the event. If anything is going to be on that dangerous edge, that everything is carefully thought through and discussed prior. We’re really, really happy to have Kirin on board again this year. He forged a real great bond with Pete [Keen, SM Creative Director] at the beginning of 2014, plus our relationship with Terrible Records, it was a really great opportunity for him to come back and create something amazing for us. Again, it is something completely bespoke for us. For him to take the time to work on creating something new with Pete is a real benefit.”
The new locale of VCA has been a long time in the making, with the vision finally coming into fruition this year. “We scoped it out from early 2011, to be honest,” Louis reveals. “The main reason we looked there in the first place is that there are amazing government stakeholders and arts faculties, we really saw that the City Of Melbourne and Victoria wanted that to be a strong arts precinct, and we really want to be a part of that. Trying to be the flagship event for that space is perfect. The time of year works really way for VCA, and they’ve been helping us the whole way through. I think the last thing we wanted to do was walk into a completely green site and work out what we could do with an empty field. We like the idea of working within the surroundings and making it feel like a CBD festival in postcode 3000. Each year we can adapt to create for the environment, still working within the same area.”
Landing Nas to perform his certified classic debut Illmatic in full is a coup for Sugar Mountain, headlining a stellar, diverse bill. “All of us involved are always wish-listing, on our phones or in our head. Always talking, always having a thread going about what’s new, what’s great, what we can pull off. It’s about what’s available at the time. I know a few of us saw [Nas documentary] Time Is Illmatic at MIFF, and we’ve listened to the album a million times over, and at that time we were giving it another really big push, then seeing footage at Coachella. Then one day someone said, ‘We should really have a stab at this.’ Having such an amazing act, and being able to showcase that album in full for the first time in a new location, it also opens up to a completely different market,” Louis says, “And that’s exciting.”
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
